The $1,500 Dealers Choice WSOP 2021 Event #7 drew a total of 307 entries to create a prize pool of $409,845. Plenty of big names were included among those entries, and a handful of them went deep, including Phil Hellmuth (out in 18th for $4,429), Eli Elezra (20th for $3,593) and Norman Chad (21st for $3,593). But the lion’s share of the prize pool went to Vancouver native Jaswinder Lally, who picked up his first World Series of Poker gold bracelet and the tournament’s top prize of $97,915.
Lally has a grand total of two live tournament cashes on his Hendon Mob page; A 49th place finish for $1,860 in the 2018 WSOP Mixed Triple Draw Lowball event, and a 1,293rd place finish for $1,744 in the 2019 WSOP $500 No Limit Hold’em BIG 50 event. He claims to only play poker part time, and admitted after the tournament that he’d never even played some of the games being selected in the 20-game dealer’s choice format.
Perhaps the most incredible part of this run was that Lally was down to just 900 chips at one point on Day 1. But by the end of the tournament’s opening day on Monday, Lally had built his stack back up to 90,000. He entered Day 3 with 880,000 chips, placing him in fourth place among the 11 players still remaining.
Lally was dominant at the final table, and had collected 80% of the chips in play by the time the tournament was three-handed. Day 2 chip leader Ray Henson was eliminated in third place before Lally defeated former WSOP bracelet winner Andrew Kelsall to lock up his victory. The final hand of the tournament was played in Pot Limit Omaha.
Adam Friedman, Nathan Gamble come up just short of final table
Nathan Gamble was generating a lot of buzz in the $1,500 Dealers Choice event after finishing Day 1 with the tournament chip lead. Gamble had 234,500 chips with 88 players remaining heading into Day 2, and had emerged as one of the favorites to win the tournament considering his impressive history in mixed games.
Gamble entered this event with 11 WSOP cashes in games other than No-Limit Hold’em since 2017. That included two bracelet wins in the 2017 WSOP Pot Limit Omaha Hi/Lo event (for $223,339), and the 2020 WSOP Online $600 Pot Limit Omaha 8 or Better event (for $89,424). He settled for a seventh place finish for $9,768 in this one.
Adam Friedman also made it to Wednesday’s Day 3, but was the second player eliminated. He finished in 10th place for $5,612. Friedman won the $10,000 Dealers Choice Championship in both 2019 and 2018, and will almost certainly be a threat in the WSOP Event #36 Dealers Choice tournament that starts on October 18.
Final Table Payouts
1. Jaswinder “Jesse” Lally: $97,915
2. Andrew “AJ” Kelsall: $60,514
3. Ray Henson: $40,062
4. Ian O’Hara: $27,147
5. Adam Kipnis: $18,839
6. Christopher Lindner: $13,396
Featured Image Credit: Haley Hintze
